It looks like several companies are learning what happens when you mess with the internet - and they're learning it the hard way. Several major companies have been hit by the collective powers of Anonymous after 4chan launched several distributed denial-of-service attacks. What many have been predicting for a long time now has finally happened: an actual war between the powers that be on one side, and the internet on the other. Update: PayPal has admitted their WikiLeaks snub came after pressure from the US government, and Datacell, which takes care of payments to Wikileaks, is threatening to sue MasterCard over Wikileaks' account suspension. Update II: Visa.com is down due to the attack. Update III: PayPal has caved under the pressure, and will release the funds in the WikiLeaks account.

"There's little else we can do, and these attacks are entirely harmless; no people are being harmed in the process - they're just inconvenienced. "

Uh huh. Just as harmless as public transportation going on a strike on the day you want to use it to get to the job interview, which might be a big deal for you.

Some people rely on paypal or visa services. If their actual service servers would go down, and block your paypal money transfers, and temporarily invalidate your visa card, you wouldn't think it was entirely harmless.

i'm not against the action. It's just that the "entirely harmless" part felt like something the author didn't quite think through.